View 521 June 2 - 8, 2008 (original) (raw)
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Does anyone know anything about this:
Science based low cost energy?
Jerry,
BlackLight Power is a company seemingly run by competent scientists. They claim to have discovered a process for producing power that has none of the disadvantages of current techniques. For an overview go to:-
http://www.blacklightpower.com/applications.shtml#BlackLightPowerPlants
John Edwards
I never heard of this. It sounds interesting: too interesting not to have caused a blaze of publicity and enormous interest from the scientific community. There was a spatter of publicity for a while, then nothing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/nov/04/energy.science was one such reaction to the announcement. Note the date. Here is an excerpt:
What has much of the physics world up in arms is Dr Mills's claim that he has produced a new form of hydrogen, the simplest of all the atoms, with just a single proton circled by one electron. In his "hydrino", the electron sits a little closer to the proton than normal, and the formation of the new atoms from traditional hydrogen releases huge amounts of energy.
This is scientific heresy. According to quantum mechanics, electrons can only exist in an atom in strictly defined orbits, and the shortest distance allowed between the proton and electron in hydrogen is fixed. The two particles are simply not allowed to get any closer.
According to Dr Mills, there can be only one explanation: quantum mechanics must be wrong. "We've done a lot of testing. We've got 50 independent validation reports, we've got 65 peer-reviewed journal articles," he said. "We ran into this theoretical resistance and there are some vested interests here. People are very strong and fervent protectors of this [quantum] theory that they use."
Rick Maas, a chemist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNC) who specialises in sustainable energy sources, was allowed unfettered access to Blacklight's laboratories this year. "We went in with a healthy amount of scepticism. While it would certainly be nice if this were true, in my position as head of a research institution, I really wouldn't want to make a mistake. The last thing I want is to be remembered as the person who derailed a lot of sustainable energy investment into something that wasn't real."
But Prof Maas and Randy Booker, a UNC physicist, left under no doubt about Dr Mill's claims. "All of us who are not quantum physicists are looking at Dr Mills's data and we find it very compelling," said Prof Maas. "Dr Booker and I have both put our professional reputations on the line as far as that goes."
All of which sounds encouraging, and we certainly know that radical theories get short shrift with today's grant-supported science establishment: but once again, the report is so enthusiastic that it is hard to believe it has not dominated the energy debates since. Note that the date of Professor Rick Maas of UNC is dated September 2005.
A Google search on Rick Maas UNC yields:
UNC Asheville Saddened by Death of Rick Maas, Environmental Studies Professor and National Water Quality Expert
Dr. Rick Maas Dr. Rick Maas (center) with UNC Asheville alumnae Wendy Middleton (left) and Dr. Steve Patch (right)
Richard P. Maas, a UNC Asheville environmental studies professor and one of the nation�s leading water quality researchers, died Dec. 12, 2005, following a brief illness. He was 54.
Maas, who joined UNC Asheville in 1987, was a founder and co-director of UNC Asheville�s Environmental Quality Institute (EQI), which has served government agencies, non-profit organizations and the private sector as a center for education, research and technical assistance on environmental issues for the past 18 years. As one of the nation�s largest repositories of lead contamination data, EQI has ongoing projects concerning the water quality of Western North Carolina streams and lakes, arsenic exposure from pressure-treated lumber and mercury exposure from fish consumption.
and nothing else. Since Maas is the primary science qualified enthusiast for Blacklight this seems odd at best.
Snopes gives no hits on Blacklight or on hydrinos at all.
Supposedly Blacklight was building a demonstration unit. Since we have seen nothing about that in the last two years since the announcement, one does wonder what happened.
I would rejoice if someone got rich with this form of cold fusion (I know, that's not quite what is described here, but there are similarities). There are no hydrogen wells, but the "hydrino reaction" described here supposedly releases more energy than would be required to disassociate hydrogen from, say, sea water. If you could just get your money (well, energy) back from extracting hydrogen from sea water, you'd get rich: the resulting concentrated stuff in the residual bitterns is enormously valuable, containing gold, uranium, magnesium, and all kinds of good stuff. (See my stories about that: "Power to the People" was one of them. They were well researched and used nuclear energy to pump and evaporate sea water. The stories will be in Exile -- and Glory!, a collection which will come out from Baen http://www.amazon.com/Exile-Glory-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/1416555633/jerrypournellcha )
My conclusion is that the Blacklight process isn't workable. I sure wish it were, but nothing I can find causes me to believe that.
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I suppose I should react to Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton's announcement (or reports of her coming announcement this Saturday) but given that this is the Clintons I will wait until the announcement is made. The Clintons are, after all, very much enamored of the theory that the horse might learn to sing...
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An odd coincidence: I got messages of support from the widows of Van Vogt and Bob Forward, both today. I'm pleased to hear from them.
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A good day. I got about 800 words of Mamelukes done, working upstairs in the monk's cell. I need to get into the habit of doing that.